In the design of vacuum furnace systems commonplace to employ a hot zone structure, which is made up of a plurality of heating elements strips, fabricated from molybdenum which is commonly called moly and will be called moly throughout this description. In one prior art design of a moly hot zone, each moly heating strip is formed into an incomplete circle and those circular elements are stacked beside one another to form a cylinder-like structure. In another design of a moly hot zone, each heating ring is formed of a plurality of heating strips. Together the moly heating strips make a chain of heating elements which when viewed together form an open ended ring-like structure with a gap between the starting heating strip and the ending heating strip. The one piece moly ring and the ring of the moly elements, are incomplete because, at one of the two open ends, electrical energy must be applied and at the other of the two open ends, the electrical energy completes the circuit excursion and passes on to another open ring or to an electrical terminal. While the foregoing moly hot zones have been quite acceptable, there are occasions when it is preferable to use a graphite hot zone. For instance, in a brazing operation the filler material, or the brazing material often drips toward the bottom of the furnace and lands on the moly heating elements and does damage to those moly heating elements. If the vacuum furnace is equipped with a graphite hot zone, there is virtually no damage from the dripping filler material because the graphite is rugged and does not either mechanically or chemically respond damage-wise to dripping hot filler material. Accordingly, in the event of such prospective use, the furnace user often wants to employ a graphite hot zone design. It has been the practice heretofore to design a graphite hot zone by having a plurality of graphite heating strips formed in an open ended circular chain-like fashion. The ends of each of the strips are held by support members which are secured to some secure structure in the furnace. In the prior art, the end of the graphite heating strip chain (that is connected to the electrical energy terminal) is held by a graphite support member which was fashioned to go to the top of the furnace chamber. Near the top of the furnace chamber the graphite support member makes a direct connection to the copper input leads which come from the electrical energy source. Such an arrangement in the past gave rise to difficulty when the user wanted to convert the furnace from a graphite hot zone into a moly heating ring mode of operation. By having the graphite support member, in the prior art, fashioned to pass through the insulating section surrounding the hot zone, the conversion is made quite difficult. The present arrangement permits the terminal support assembly to be readily clamped to a moly terminal rod and readily removed therefrom if the user decides to convert the furnace from a graphite hot zone into a moly hot zone arrangement. In addition, the present system includes graphfoil (laminated graphite) washers located between the graphite bolts and the graphite heating elements as well as between the graphite heating elements and the support ears, or protrusions, of the support member so that the resiliency of the graphfoil permits the expanding graphite to expand while at the same time does not permit the graphite bolt to work its way into a "loose" condition.